#gemma syme

[worldofcomfortingillusion]

The Shocking Pinks are on tour

[gemmasyme]

14 February. Free entry.

--------------------------------------- FANTASING // BAD EVIL // 7pm --------------------------------------- ☯☯ FANTASING ☯☯ ☯ “Instant Fantasy” music video release party ☯

*✧ FANTASING are playing! *｡✧ ♩Bad Evil is playing too!♫

=͟͟͞͞ ⌨ 7pm // The Physics Room // Sat 14 February // FREE ** BYO**

❤ Download our EP for free, or buy a record from Galaxy records ❤ http://instantfantasy.bandcamp.com/

◐ Early show so that everyone can head to Into The Void playing at Wunderbar, Lyttelton at 10pm ◑ https://www.facebook.com/events/839682166094515/ *✧ Transport *✧  Buses from central station 8:40pm (arrive 9:10) and 9:10pm (arrive 9:40pm). Return buses don't run late though, so organise a cab back!

*ධ̎ૢ ˒̫̮ ධ̎ૢ

[mmmindflowww]

songs of 2014, #20 thru #11

#20

Shura

"Just Once"

Through innocent admissions, Shura bares herself in a captivating display of breakout talent and power. When she's telling you she wants to get drunk, and when she's telling you to call her by the wrong name, she knows that whatever bonds were keeping you together are all but gone. She paints the picture of an imminent breakup through the lens of "getting lost", and it sounds so intriguing, you'll want to leave her yourself.

#19

Shocking Pinks

"St. Louis" feat. Gemma Syme

Not a lot of songs are happy. Most flirt with melodrama, hope and tension. "St. Louis" is not one of those songs, though. Gemma Syme wants to be alone, but rather than be frustrated or coy, she's comes to terms with her reality and just wants to wallow in it. Fit for an evening of undistracted reflection, "St. Louis" doesn't try to bring you down, it only offers transparent thoughts and honest feeling.

#18

YACHT

"Plastic Soul"

When it was initially released I was calling "Plastic Soul" the "song of 2014" and, well, top twenty isn't bad. Not to discredit this monstrous dancehall jam, I might've only overplayed it a bit. Give it a spin yourself and relish in the tech-savvy and wise-beyond-years musings of YACHT.

#17

Twin Peaks

"Flavor"

Just what any upstart band of teenagers needs is a breakout hit, and for these boisterous Chicagoans, "Flavor" is it. From their live show you can't see any obvious favoring of this song over any others, but it's the peanut butter now stuck on the roof of many a mouth.

#16

Ava Luna

"PRPL"

This song comes in like hitting a "slo-mo" button, instantly bringing everything to half-speed to match its lazy loping, putting you on edge and at ease at the same time before an enchanting vocal delivery from Felicia Douglass.

#15

Pillar Point

Yes, that is a subtle-Cyndi Lauper reference ("girls just wanna have fun" becomes "kids just wanna get done"). The playful, lo-fi synths and drum machine backbone make this one of the most original love songs of the year.

#14

Painted Palms

"Spinning Signs"

As dizzying as the title implies, "Spinning Signs" is a whirlwind of synths and drum accents that only lets up for a few moments in the chorus before whooshing back, carrying the listener headlong with it. Enjoy the ride.

#13

The Juan Maclean

"Running Back To You"

As the slow jam on a dance album, "Running Back To You" packs so much instant groovability, it's hard not to imagine it in the background of every great party for the next five years.

#12

Hospitality

"Going Out"

A perfect bassline plus whatever kind of subtle accent Amber Papini has is enough to make me melt; and hit repeat again and again and again...

#11

The Antlers

"Parade"

Exploring the highs and lows of moving on, whether from past haunts or future troubles, Peter Silberman asserts himself as master of his own destiny, a keen observer and a rational thinker.

[gemmasyme]

The Physics Room is a contemporary art project space based in Christchurch, New Zealand.

[gemmasyme]

Spirited discussion about New Zealand art and visual culture

In another room is Gemma Syme’s video work Stunt double, playing on a flat screen TV placed on an easel. I am not quite sure if the easel, with its connotations of painterliness and work-in-progress, is entirely at ease with the video’s self-sufficient sculptural logic. The video is quite simple: a frontal mid shot of a woman’s hips and thighs, as she lowers various forms, predominantly vessels, into her plain underwear. It is cropped in such a way that the waistline of her underwear coincides with the upper bound of the screen, a careful choice that maintains an obliqueness to the operation. The wry queering of the everyday trappings of gender, and use of quotidian objects is reminiscent of Grant Lingard’s mid-90s work using men’s underwear, in particular his Hutch and Lure (http://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/objects/99-421-19/). Formally minimal, with is focus on the relationship of the hand and body to object, Stunt double offers a humorous but rigorous examination of a bounded set of interactions.

The insertion of bottles into underwear is clearly a phallic pun, and the video’s awkward and tentative nature suggests a parodying rather than a valorisation of the phallic signifier. It seems to be a lampooning of the Freudian myth of penis envy, with a title that puns both verbally on the word ‘cunt’ - perhaps operating as an homage to the 1980s London feminist theatre group Cunning Stunts or the later NZ collective of a similar name - while also offering a performative pun on the phallic function. By offering these shrouded vessels as an alternative, ludicrous substitute for the penis, Syme seems to suggest that by virtue of greater size or more insistent rigidity, they are a hyperreal stunt double, one more effective, more virile, than the original, offering the possibility of a sexual economy in which the penis has been superseded or displaced.

Both artists share a sense of bodily humour and vulnerability, and the pairing cleverly draws out and develops complexities within their practices. This is a strong early show from North, making a clear statement about the intent and approach of the new space.

Read more: http://eyecontactsite.com/2014/11/projects-in-north-christchurch#ixzz3K7OUdYcU  Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial

[gemmasyme]

Opening performance at North Projects

[gemmasyme]

I got reviewed!

In [the exhibition] Two In The Pink, [November 2014 at North Projects], Gemma Syme and Imogen Taylor present works that are suited to such a challenge. “Stunt Double”, a digital video performance in which Syme places a variety of phallic-shaped objects down her underwear, is located in the space of a former bedroom. As public performance and act of disclosure it sits somewhere between intimate confection and communal action.

Placed on a painter’s easel, Syme’s video has the sensibility and formalism of a painting, but not in the more familiar traditions of European or American modernism. Implicitly, she parodies the certainties of European art, eliciting a more complex response. Inviting the viewer to be partners in crime to a child-like prank, its intimacy is both uncomfortable and compelling. What sense and resolution can be reached from the artist’s actions and intentions? A consciously juvenile game intended for her peers or political act of feminist empowerment? To its credit ‘Stunt Double’ feels like both and neither.

- Warren Feeney, The Press, 6 November 2014

[gemmasyme]

Gemma Syme & Imogen Taylor

1 - 22 November 2014